All too often, experts recommend solutions that fix immediate problems without addressing the systemic political factors that created them in the first place. Further, they produce an accidental collusion with “benevolent autocrats,” leaving dictators with yet more power to violate the rights of the poor. (2014)

An excoriating attack on the tragic hubris of the West’s efforts to improve the lot of the so-called developing world. (2006)

Since the end of World War II, economists have tried to figure out how poor countries in the tropics could attain standards of living approaching those of countries in Europe and North America. The problem is not the failure of economics, William Easterly argues, but the failure to apply economic principle to practical policy work. (2001)

Book Chapters

The European origins of economic development, (with Ross Levine), in The Long Economic and Political Shadow of History Volume 1. A Global View, Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) Press, edited by Stelios Michalopoulos and Elias Papaioannou, 2017

The Role of Growth Slowdowns and Forecast Errors in Public Debt Crises, in Fiscal Policy after the Financial Crisis, National Bureau of Economic Research Conference Volume, University of Chicago Press, edited by Alberto Alesina and Francesco Giavazzi, 2013